Southern California's
Tech
Startup Directory
Showcasing Southern California's innovation, one startup at a time. Every funded and bootstrapped company, from seed round to first dollar of revenue, tracked as it happens.
Includes SEC Form D filings from the last 3 years, plus all-time totals for companies sourced from YC and news coverage.
Artificial Intelligence
The region's largest single cluster by company count — AI and machine learning threaded through nearly every other industry here, from defense to biotech to entertainment.
Aerospace & Defense
Home to SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and a new wave of hypersonics and space-infrastructure startups.
Entertainment & Gaming Tech
Hollywood's production infrastructure, live events, and a growing games and creator-tools scene.
Semiconductor Hardware
Qualcomm and Broadcom anchor a chip-design cluster spanning the region.
Medical Technology
A deep biotech research base and a growing bench of medical device and diagnostics startups.
B2B
Business software and services sold to other companies. The largest single category of startup across Southern California, spanning sales tools, vertical operating systems, and everything in between.
Industrials
Manufacturing, hardware, and physical-world operations. Overlaps heavily with the region's decades-old aerospace and defense manufacturing base, now extending into robotics and automated production.
Consumer
Products and apps built directly for individual consumers, drawing on Southern California's media and entertainment base.
Healthcare
Health tech, medical devices, and healthcare services, backed by a decades-old biotech research base and a deep bench of clinical and diagnostics startups.
Fintech
Financial technology: payments, banking, investing, and financial infrastructure.
Education
Education technology and learning platforms built across Southern California.
Real Estate & Construction
Property technology, construction tech, and real estate services.
Part of the NantWorks ecosystem of biotech and health companies founded by billionaire physician-entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, who also owns the Los Angeles Times and invented the cancer drug Abraxane.
Series B$67.6MThis is the legal entity behind Liquid Death, the canned-water brand founded by Mike Cessario in 2019; its backers have included Live Nation and celebrity investors such as Josh Brolin.
Series B$61.0MAnaheim-based snack company that raised a $15M Series B in December 2024 led by existing investor Cambridge Companies SPG, and named board chair Kevin Rutherford as CEO in the same round.
Series B$60.1MPlexium is a next-generation targeted protein degradation (TPD) company that discovers Monovalent Direct Degraders and Molecular Glues.
Series B$57.1MFounded by CEO Ryan Schonfeld, the physical-security software company has raised over $65M, including a Series B led by Anthos Capital, with early backing from well-known angel investors Elad Gil and Lachy Groom.
Series B$56.0MElectrochemical Additive Manufacturing Mass Production of Next Generation Components High-Resolution Metal 3D Printing at Scale Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) is... Read More
Series B$54.5MMake smarter real estate decisions and close more deals with Placer.ai's location intelligence and foot traffic insights.
Co-founded in 2018 by Scott Glenn and Lauren Otsuki, the skincare-tech company (parent of the Ourself brand) is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and added former Allergan CEO Brent Saunders to its board.